Building Hope for the New Year

It’s been a tough year for women’s rights.  We lost abortion rights (even though access had been eroded for years) when the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health was issued this past June with our reactionary Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and 50 years of precedent to give a green light to states to outlaw abortion.  Now 13 states ban all or virtually all abortions and only 17 states and the District of Columbia broadly protect abortion rights. No doubt, many women’s lives and liberty now hang in the balance.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has continued to fight in the courts against adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even though already ratified by the requisite 38 states. See Maura Casey’s article, Publish ERA, let skirmishes begin and watch Equal Means Equal’s video: Joe, Do It!

The ERA would establish sex as a protected category, with the same weight as race, which would make it far easier to challenge all kinds of discriminatory practices in every state in the union, including jobs discrimination, violence against women, and yes, abortion bans. See and share our Why We Need the ERA brochure.

And then the coordinated worldwide effort to deny the existence of sex, and to remove sex-based protections including the ability of women to organize against our oppression and to even have language to talk about ourselves, has continued apace in 2022.  California passed two horrific bills this year, SB 923 and SB107 and would respectively indoctrinate the medical and mental health professions in gender identity ideology and make the state a magnet for minors seeking sterilizing and mutilating so-called “gender affirming care.”  See our post about these dangerous bills.

Indoctrination in our schools and universities is endemic.  Feminists are losing jobs and livelihoods and facing civil rights complaints for refusing to deny the existence of two biological sexes. A lesbian in Norway was even facing criminal charges and up to three years in prison for supposed “hate speech” for stating that men could neither be lesbians or mothers.

And most recently, Scotland passed a gender self-ID law, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, that will allow any male, including convicted sex offenders, to enter women’s spaces and programs simply on his say-so, disregarding concerns about women’s safety.

So, there is plenty of reason to despair.  But there is also reason to hope.

Women can and are fighting back.  Women in Scotland protested and sang a rendition of Auld Lang Syne outside of parliament during the vote, “women’s rights are human rights.”  Their struggle is not over.

Rise-Up for Abortion Rights has done amazing organizing in response to the overturning of Roe.

Two women who challenged their sacking in the UK for their gender critical views were vindicated in court:  Allison Bailey  and Maya Forstater.

Our Duty, a non-partisan group of parents opposing child medical transition, organized a successful “First Do No Harm Unity Rally” of 100 people in Anaheim California in front of a national convention of pediatricians.  The central organizer is a mother, lawyer, and liberal Democrat.  The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the UK has been shuttered following the investigation headed up by Dr. Hilary Cass revealing dangerous invasive procedures being recommended for gender dysphoric youth with little screening or oversight.

And then there are the women of Iran, who are leading a struggle against an extremely repressive and misogynist fundamentalist regime.  In response to the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in custody of the morals police for not wearing her headscarf properly, and at great risk to themselves, our Iranian sisters have poured out into the streets again and again.

The song, Baraye, has been the anthem of the protests:

For the sake of dancing in the street

For the fear felt in the moment of kissing

For my sister your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten minds

For shame, for pennilessness

For the yearning for an ordinary life

For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams…

For women, life, liberty

 

For women, life, liberty!  If they can do it, we can do it!

Happy New Year, sisters!

JUSTICE FOR ANN MENASCHE – SIGN THE SOLIDARITY STATEMENT!

Ann Menasche was fired from her job of 20 years for asserting that abortion bans harm women as a sex.  Find out more about her story here: Justice for Ann Menasche – Defend Feminists!

We urge everyone to sign a Statement of Solidarity in support of Ann and share it with everyone who supports maintaining sex as a protected category under law, and the rights of employees to their own political opinions and activities independent of their employer.

 

Ann Menasche comments on sex-denialism

Forum on the New McCarthyism Targeting Feminists’ Jobs and Livelihoods, Saturday Dec. 10th

THE NEW McCARTHYISM: THE ATTACK ON FEMINISTS' JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS

THE NEW McCARTHYISM: THE ATTACK ON FEMINISTS’ JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS is the title of our next Feminist Forum, which will be held on Saturday, December 10th at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time, 4:00 Eastern on Zoom.

In the 1950’s it was “the Red Scare.” In the second decade of the 21st century, the methods are the same but the target is different: feminists and others who do not agree with gender identity orthodoxy that conflates sex and gender and denies the existence of biological sex.

JOIN US FOR THIS IMPORTANT DISCUSSION ON HOW WE CAN PUT AN END TO THIS WITCH HUNT SO THAT WOMEN CAN STATE OUR OPINIONS AND FIGHT FOR OUR SEX-BASED RIGHTS WITHOUT FEAR!

SPEAKERS:

Christy Hammer is a sociologist with a 35-year university teaching career, and currently an associate professor of education at the University of Southern Maine. After telling her graduate students that there were only two biological sexes (with variations), students walked out of her classroom, demanded she recant, and sought to get her fired all in the name of “restorative justice”. One trans-identified student who felt personally attacked, filed a Title IX sexual harassment/discrimination complaint against her, which was summarily dismissed by the University counsel. Christy has a long history working in LGBTQ youth advocacy, and in promoting anti-racism in schools. What happened to Christy was described by others as an example of the “woke attacking the woke.”

Ann Menasche is a radical feminist, Leftist, lesbian, and founding member of Feminists in Struggle (FIST).  She was fired without warning last May from her job of 20 years as a Civil Rights attorney at Disability Rights California for asserting that abortion bans harm women as a sex, and for her FIST activity outside of work. The executive director had issued a statement opposing the threatened overturning of Roe and asked for staff feedback. DRC’s statement had mentioned every group that could be harmed by illegal abortion except women. After stating an obvious truth, Ann faced an onslaught of name-calling and slurs, and was condemned in absentia as having opinions “inconsistent with the values of the agency”.  For more on this story, see Defend Feminists

Everyone, women and men, are welcome to attend this forum!

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Kathleen Stock to be Featured at FIST Forum on January 29th on Gender Ideology and Academic Freedom

Feminists In Struggle presents an important discussion about the attacks on women in academia who dare to question gender ideology in our Feminist Forum: Attacks Against Academic Freedom Targeting Women in Academia.


The forum will take place through Zoom on Saturday, January 29th at 1:00-3:00 p.m. Pacific time (4:00 p.m. Eastern Time).

$5 tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite

SPEAKERS:

Dr. Kathleen Stock – Until October 2021, Kathleen Stock was a Professor of Philosophy at University of Sussex. She is the author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (Fleet/Little Brown 2021). She regularly discusses gender identity ideology and its effects on women and girls in public writing and speaking, and was awarded an OBE for services to higher education in 2020.

For an excellent review of her book, see Robert Jensen’s Making Sense of Sex and Gender 

Dr. Devin Jane Buckley left academia after finding it to be ideologically hostile to her intellectual and political interests. She received her Ph.D. at Duke University where she studied philosophy and literature. She also holds two undergraduate degrees, one in neuroscience and another in philosophy from Boston University with publications, awards and honors across disciplines. Dr. Buckley uses her training as a writer and philosopher to advocate for women’s sex-based rights as a freelance writer for 4W and as a board member at Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF). She is currently studying for law school in hopes that litigation and future legislation may bring victories for women’s rights, even if academia has helped erase them.